The accurate dissolution, dispensing and reaction of chemicals has numerous applications. These include analytical procedures such as, for example, the derivitization for HPLC determination of amino acid composition; sequencing operations such as in the Edman degradation procedure; and in synthesis of various substances, such as RNA, DNA, peptide and oligosaccharide assemblies.
Moreover, a growing number of research facilities, especially non-chemical laboratories, require synthetic peptides. In conventional practice, the production of synthetic peptides requires the work of chemists who are highly skilled in synthetic chemistry. This, and the necessity of exercising precise control of the chemicals to be added in a process, including quantity, sequence, timing, and the like, adds to the cost and time required to produce a given result, and may lead to inaccuracies.
Patents of interest which are exemplary of the state-of-the-art in this field are Verlander et al U.S. Pat. No. 4,362,699, issued Dec. 7, 1982, entitled "APPARATUS FOR HIGH PRESSURE PEPTIDE SYNTHESIS" and Bridgham et al U.S. Pat. No. 4,668,476, issued May 26, 1987, entitled "AUTOMATED POLYPEPTIDE SYNTHESIS APPARATUS", the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.